Chapter 2

Seraphina POV:

"You understand you're terminating a healthy, four-month-old pregnancy, Mrs. Bianchi?" the doctor asks, his voice gentle but his eyes full of a judgment I can't bear to meet.

I stare at the pale green wall of the private clinic, the color of new leaves and dead hope.

Yes, I understand.

My mind betrays me again, flooding with memories of Lorenzo before the wedding, his hands tracing the line of my jaw as he swore he'd burn the world down for me. I remember the raw, unguarded joy on his face when I told him I was pregnant, how he'd dropped to his knees and pressed his ear to my belly, whispering promises to our child. He was so tender then, so fiercely protective.

That man is a ghost. The man who exists now is the one who let his mistress taunt me, who locked me away, who looked at me with the eyes of a stranger.

"Yes," I say, my voice flat and hard. "I'm sure."

The procedure is a cold, clinical agony. I focus on the sharp scrape of steel within me. It's a physical manifestation of the hollowing out of my soul. It's a pain I can control, a pain I have chosen.

When it's over, a nurse with kind eyes leans over me. "Would you like to... see it?" she asks softly.

That's when I break. The carefully constructed walls of ice around my heart splinter into a million unswept shards. A silent scream tears through me, but no sound comes out. Tears stream down my face, hot and endless.

My child. My baby. Gone.

Taken from me by my own hand, because I couldn't bear to bring it into a world where its own father had become a monster. I feel the loss like a physical amputation, a phantom limb that will ache for the rest of my life.

I wake up eight hours later in the recovery room. The first thing I do is check my phone. No missed calls. No messages.

He hasn't even noticed I'm gone.

My thumb hovers over Isabella's private social media page, a masochistic impulse I can't fight. There's a new post. A photo of her hand, her nails painted a blood-red, resting on Lorenzo's chest. In the background, you can see the rumpled sheets of an unfamiliar bed. The caption is simple: "Mine."

My face becomes a mask of stone as I turn to the nurse who has just entered the room. "The... remains," I say, the word catching in my throat. "I want them cremated. Please have them placed in a small, simple box."

She nods, her eyes full of a pity I don't want.

Ten days. That's how long it will take to get my new identity, my passport. Ten days I have to survive in this house, playing a part, before I can disappear forever.

When I return to the estate, the house is silent and empty. I walk into the master suite, to the small, personal mini-fridge Lorenzo had installed for my late-night pregnancy cravings. I open the door and place the small, plain wooden box in the very back, behind a carton of orange juice.

I close the door but don't move, just stand there, staring at the polished black surface of the fridge, feeling nothing and everything all at once.

I don't know how long I stand there, the cold air washing over my bare feet, before the heavy tread of his footsteps sounds in the hallway and the bedroom door swings open.

Lorenzo is home. He loosens his tie, his gaze sweeping over me with a flicker of annoyance. "Are you hungry, Sera?" he asks, his voice tired.

Then his gaze drifts past me, to the open fridge. His eyes narrow, snagging on the strange, small box tucked away in the back.